Sounds familiar, right? What are financial dimensions?

We use financial dimensions to add information to the accounting and classify accounting data. In the same way, we can reduce the number of main accounts for the same type of transaction nature.

And as a super important point we always have to keep in mind: we use them (or rather, we should use them) in organizational hierarchies and approval workflows.

We have different types of financial dimensions: custom ones and entity-based ones, both from main forms and from operating units.

We can use them, for example, to enter what type of cost originated an expense or which business line generated revenue, along with customer and vendor information. We can also reflect the particularities of each business; for example, in a bookstore, which edition of the book we are buying or selling.

And with organizational hierarchies, to define the structure of an organization according to its operating units.

So… what’s the difference?

Setup — let the party begin 😉

First, to have financial tags available across all transactions, we need to enable them depending on the system version — the rest will be enabled by default.

• (Preview) Enable financial tags for expense reports
• Enable financial tags for project financial transactions
• Add support for financial tags to the free text invoice entity within data management
• Enable financial tags for Accounting Source Explorer
• Enable financial tags for purchase order invoicing
• Enable financial tags for sales order invoicing

General Ledger module > General ledger parameters > Financial tags

We will also need to define a delimiter that separates financial tag values.

Also, the delimiter is shared across all companies — we can’t have different delimiters per company. So it’s super important to consider all the legal entities that make up the organization and how they report their information to the authorities, to avoid conflicts in electronic reports and filings.

Financial tag types

Value types define what the user can enter in a tag when posting a transaction. There are five in total:

Create financial tags

We click on the ‘New’ option and fill in the information:

For example:

Selecting the ‘Custom list’ type, we’ll see that the ‘Tag values’ option is enabled on the action pane:

And from here we’ll create all the custom list values we need. It’s a grid-type form, so we can create values manually, copy and paste, or upload the values using the Excel Add-In:

Activate or deactivate tags

To be able to use financial tags, we first need to activate them. To do so, we need to select the ‘Activate or deactivate tags’ option from the action pane.

From the Activate or deactivate financial tags form, we mark the tags we want to enable from the inactive tags section and move them to the active tags section using the right arrow.

Once the batch process finishes, we’ll see that the ‘Active’ checkbox that was previously unchecked is now enabled:

To deactivate tags, we follow the same process but in reverse: we select the active tags we want to deactivate and move them to the inactive tags section using the left arrow.

How values are filled in on transactions

Logic without financial tag rules

If the ‘Default financial tag rules’ feature is disabled, the behavior is as follows:

1. Header 2. Account 3. Offset account

Whenever we have the same combination of financial tag values in the transaction, we can fill in the values from the header so they replicate automatically across all lines, both for account and offset account. This is very useful when we need to post journals with many lines.

If we can’t fill them in from the header because we’ll have several combinations in the journal, entering the values from the account will automatically fill them in on the offset account.

If we have several lines to balance the journal (when using Debit and Credit), the tag values will not be filled in automatically from the account, so we need to enter them manually (we always have the option to copy and paste data from grid-type forms).

---

1. Header 2. Lines

In all forms that have a header and lines view, the logic is the same: we fill in the information from the header and it will automatically carry over to all lines.

Up to this point, as we can see, the behavior is what we’d expect considering how we’ve been working with financial dimensions. But watch out! We don’t have the functionality available for changes made to a value from the header to carry over to the lines, nor will tags be automatically filled in on already-created lines if we load them afterwards.

In the case of tax lines or accounting entries generated automatically by the system, the tags will be filled in without any manual input at the time of posting, depending on the transaction type.

Financial tag rules

Financial tag rules allow us to define default values so that tags are filled in automatically on transactions. This helps us speed up the process, ensure uniformity and efficiency in tagging, and load them much faster.

The rules are available from v.42 and to use them we need to enable the feature: Default financial tag rules.

Set up financial tag rules

To create a new financial tag rule, we start by clicking the ‘Create’ button on the action pane. Then, we fill in the fields (in this order):

As we fill in these fields, the name will be automatically completed with a description of the rule.

If we want this condition to take precedence over values manually entered by the user or another condition we have for the same field, we need to enable the ‘Overwrite existing value’ option.

The language used to define and execute them is Microsoft Power Fx. We have a generator with Copilot available, and as we configure the rules we can see a formula guide.

But anyway, let me share how I’m understanding it.

For me, it’s the same as the ‘IF’ function we use in Excel, with the difference that in the first part of the condition we’re going to indicate the origin within the transaction in the system. Then we need to indicate what happens if it finds the value we want to fill in that tag, and then what happens if it doesn’t find it.

For example:

What we want here is that if the offset account of the journal is of type ‘Bank’, the tag is filled in with that same value, and if it’s not of type Bank it stays blank.

• Doc: represents the current document, meaning the journal line being processed at that moment (we normally always start with doc)
• OffsetAccountType: is the field that indicates the type of offset account. It can be Bank, Customer, Vendor, etc.
• LedgerJournalACType.Bank: checks that the field we are pointing to is of type ‘Bank’.

• Doc: same as in the first part, we’re telling it to look for the value in the journal line we’re working on.
• OffsetBank: is the field from which it has to take the value. Here we’re referring to the offset bank.
• Account: this is the value to be written in the financial tag. In our example, it’s the bank ID (Account field).

If the offset account is not of type Bank, the financial tag CuentaBancariaCP is left empty without generating any error. This is important because the same rule is evaluated on all journal lines, not just the ones that have a bank as offset account.

Simulate a financial tag rule

We can test whether we’re setting up the rule correctly before activating it using the ‘Simulate’ rule functionality. We need to select an existing transaction in the system and with the simulator we’ll see if there are any errors, which condition is being evaluated, and the value that will be filled in on the tag.

Once we’re sure we can use it, we just need to enable the ‘Enabled’ checkbox:

Let’s see everything together…

Copy financial tags

If the rule turned out great and we need to reuse it, we can copy it to another legal entity or to another transaction type.

To copy it to another transaction, for example if we have a rule for sales orders and we want to replicate it for purchase orders, we need to select the option ‘Copy >> Copy within legal entity’ and follow the wizard.

Here it’s important that the tags are enabled and we have the tags configured in the other company (otherwise it will be empty).

It doesn’t need to be the same name and type because we have to select the equivalent in the other company, but we can simplify the process by having the same tags across all companies.

Queries & reports

To filter transactions by a financial tag from the advanced filters, we can add the following options:

Or we can filter directly from the query by entering the value or values we need.

We have tag information available from:

• 🌿 Voucher transactions
• 🌿 Accounting Source Explorer
• 🌿 Main account transactions

Show inactive financial tags

If a financial tag has been deactivated, we can see the information that had been recorded by selecting the ‘Show inactive financial tags’ option.

Edit financial tags

Once the transactions have been posted and, as a result, the accounting entry has been created, we can edit the tag values that were filled in. D365FnO stores the audit information of who modified this data, in case we need to track the information.